Of course I don’t know what kind of voice you hear in your head when you read these entries of mine, but for this particular entry, it needs to sound something like Demi Moore’s voice, a little raspy, since I’m getting over a cold. People always say, oh, but that sounds sexy! And maybe it does, if you’re a few feet away, but when it’s right between your own ears it sounds complicated and fuzzy, like the tuner knob on your radio is just a little off. I don’t enjoy it. This weekend it was much worse, and sometimes I had to whisper, which would have been fine if I’d happened to see dead people, or else wanted to say things like “not our class, darling,” but for everyday life it did NOT suffice. And I know it’s been only a week since it started, but my morning cough has become depressingly second-nature, like it’s something I do to ward off predators.

But I’m better, and I almost sound like myself again, and tomorrow Chris and I will be driving to Michigan, because there is nothing like ditching two apartments full of half-packed boxes for a short road trip. Maybe we will go to Cereal City and mess with people in trademarked-character costumes. Who knows?

I am counting the days until the move, when my morning commute will no longer include having to stare at this billboard, with its unsettlingly straightforward headline (it’s a Sean Paul lyric; it’s a product slogan; it’s both!), and the grim specter of Sean Paul’s head, which is huge enough to be in a zone all its own, hence the slogan (and the song). Every day I sit in traffic and consider the Zone of Sean Paul’s Head. Clearly it’s a zone in which one can legally have a first name as a last name. I suppose there are worse zones (i.e., construction, demilitarized, Dottie’s Weight Loss), but I can’t wait until I don’t have to look at this dude’s great big crunk face at 8:35 every morning.

You may have read over at Jen’s blog about how our heads were in the zone Saturday night after our event (though I am proud to say Smirnoff Ice was NOT involved one bit, and it was a fine time indeed. And yes, we had sashimi at the Four Seasons, and yes, it was a very bad idea. Because (and Jen is too kind to mention this), not long after I took a bite it occurred to me that the contents of my stomach were wanting very much to be in the same zone as my head, if you know what I mean, and I think you do. So I had to excuse myself, though I didn’t tell Jen what I had done until she confessed she needed to go home to do the same thing. We ladies of the Penguin imprints, we sure do* it up!

*and by “do,” I mean “throw.”